Wyrm
by korr
Summary: Before Charles really knows what happened, it's him and Nathan raising a baby that is probably more like a demon.  Slash nathan/charles
1. Chapter 1

It had all started because Nathan had found out about one of those ancient ruins that was said to have once been the gates of hell. He, of course, thought this was painfully brutal and demanded that they play a concert there, right fucking now. Charles arranged it because making Nathan happy was reason enough to do anything. And given all the stupidly dangerous things the band had asked for in the past, this hardly even registered.

Charles wasn't foolhardy, anyone who ever said that never lived to tell the tale. He'd sent a group of klokateers who specialized in the occult to check out the site before hand. After the lake troll incident, Charles wasn't taking any chances.

It seemed like a fairly normal concert until after the show. The cleanup crew was removing the last of the corpses when someone shouted for his attention.

Charles arrived in time to find the band gathered around, well, he wasn't sure what it was.

It was splotchy and wrinkly and Charles couldn't quite identify it. It looked a bit like a very large, stunted earthworm. One of the boys waved a beer bottle around as he made an interminably stupid comment. The splotchy wrinkly thing shifted and Charles realized that it had arms. Fat, Michelin Man style arms that ended in razor sharp claws. It seemed to be reaching for the beer.

Who ever had been holding the beer bottle let the splotchy thing grab it. It tilted the bottle back in to a gapping inhuman maw filled with rows of nubbly, grinding teeth. After it finished all the liquid in the bottle it gave a disconcertingly innocent coo and began munching on the glass bottle.

For once Charles was as dumbfounded as the rest of the band.

Murderface, ever the proprietor of bad ideas offered a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels to the writhing, squirming thing. It took the bottle, claws scrapping jarringly on the glass, and fed the whole thing, liquor, glass and all into its grinding face hole. This time, when it finished, it belched, a tiny flaming belch.

"Aw, it's like a flaming, belching garbage disposal!" cooed Pickles. He must have been high off his ass. The boys gathered round it and began prodding the disgusting little hell spawn. It gnashed its teeth at Murderface and blew a spit bubble at Toki.

Before Charles knew it, they'd decided to take it home.

"We should call it Baby Murderface," suggested Murderface.

"No, we amsnt namkings it afters yous!" shouted the Swede.

Charles still wasn't convinced it was a baby. Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn't human. It had eaten forty seven glass bottles and one of Murderface's knives. It had made a horrible grinding sound when eating the knife. Charles couldn't help but wonder how drunk the band must be to find it 'cute'.

"NOOOOOO!" shouted Nathan, definitely drunk. "You guys are dildos and those are dildo names. What do you think, Charles?"

Charles was only still hanging around so that he could have the fleshy lump quietly terminated when the boys inevitably passed out drunk. Hopefully they wouldn't remember the aberration when they awoke and if they did he could always say he had found it a nice home with a farm somewhere upstate.

"I think it looks like a worm." said Charles. It was less purple splotchy and more earthworm pink now. Its eye spots were visible but under developed and the lack of distinct features made it look remarkably like an oversized worm if you ignored the things that were supposed to be limbs.

Nathan looked contemplatively at the little runt while Skwisgaar and Toki argued over something in their native language.

"Alright," he said, finally coming to a decision. "We'll call it Worm."

Worm proved surprisingly difficult to separate from the band. It had been a week now and they hadn't grown bored of it or left it alone long enough for Charles to dispose of it. He wasn't too worried, Skwisgaar was already showing signs of growing bored and the rest of the band was bound to follow.

Anyway, Charles had bigger problems to worry about at the moment. That fucking clown had found his way back into Mordhaus, and he needed to find some way to get rid of him that wouldn't unduly upset Toki.

Rockso must have snorted a fuck-ton of cocaine because somehow he mistook Worm for a baby.

"I've got your nose!" Rockso exclaimed with cracked out glee. That was quite the feat, given that Worm didn't have a nose.

Worm, whose eyespots had developed into pitch black lenses, fixed Rockso with its beady glare. It reached one stubby arm out to grasp at its 'nose' and pulled Rockso's fist into that gapping maw. It was a testament to how fucking high the clown must have been that it took him a full thirty seconds to start screaming, and another minute to pull the blood stump that was his hand out of the creature's mouth.

Charles swooped in to save the thing, and Toki held Dr. Rockso back from pummeling it. As he carried Worm out of the room he heard Rockso swear that as long as that thing continued to live here, he was never coming to visit again. He patted Worm on the back and changed directions. Charles would just swing by the kitchen to see if Jean-Pierre had any of those green beer bottles Worm seemed to like so very much.

After a few more weeks Charles had basically decided to let it live. Its skin had evened out to an almost human color. The bottomless pits that functioned as eyes lost a bit of their soul sucking other worldliness and had acquired something that looked a bit like hazel around the rim. The gapping maw mouth smoothed out to something more like lips, although there were still too many rows of teeth. It had even started growing light brown peach fuzz that might one day resemble hair.

Charles was beginning to find the thing endearing. Its teeth were better than an incinerator at destroying evidence. It could eat practically anything and leave no trace evidence to point incriminating fingers. The living room had never looked so clean. When the boys got drunk they always feed the garbage to Worm. It was refreshing to walk the halls and not run into piles of empty beer bottles.

Skwisgaar was the first to grow truly bored with Worm. Babies were normally chick magnets, but Worm repulsed even the skankiest of skanks.

Murderface is the next to lose interest; after the fifth time Nathan yelled at him for pulling a knife on Worm. ("It's a baby, Murderface, you can't just stab it!") Toki gives up when Worm refuses to learn any tricks, and a new drug is released that keeps Pickles busily under the influence for weeks.

Before Charles really knows what happened, it's him and Nathan raising a baby that is probably more like a demon. This makes a certain amount of sense as he and Nathan are the only ones to have had anything near to resembling functional families. They are the ones who take over feeding it, picking it up when it cries and keeping it away from unsuspecting bystanders when it looks hungry.

When Worm first came to live with them he spent the nights curled up on whatever drunken body was closest, but most often Nathan. When Charles realized that Worm was going to stay, he had a crib built, made out of titanium with metal spikes protruding from the sides. The crib ended up being placed in his own personal bedroom as he wouldn't trust the boys to watch a house plant, let alone a baby.

The first night Worm was put to sleep in his crib he cried and cried, and it was like nails on a chalkboard, his hundreds of teeth grinding together at an inhuman pitch.

Around three a.m. he hadn't been able to take it anymore and he'd picked Worm up and settled him into sleep on the bed next to him. Worm gnawed contentedly on the blanket and Charles managed to catch three precious hours of sleep before work the next day.

The next few nights passed in roughly the same manner before Charles gave up completely and resigned himself to sharing a bed with a demonic aberration that eats glass and chews holes through the sheets.

"Uh," Nathan has just knocked on his door. At two a.m. Charles had just finally gotten Worm to settle after giving him his late night bottle, a pretty dark purple bottle Jean-Pierre found in the back of the pantry.

Nathan has been watching Worm during the day and Charles has been watching him at night and while they haven't really talked about it, it seems to work. Charles can't really imagine what Nathan is doing at his door at this hour.

"Uh, can I come in?"

In all the years they've known each other, Nathan has never once asked to enter Charles' private quarters. Even after the hand full of times they slept together, he's never shown an interest in Charles' inner sanctum. It's not like they are a couple, Charles always puts his tie back on afterwards and Nathan still bangs sluts back stage. There is this desperate pull that they feel for each other sometimes. Like gravity, it's always there. But, also like gravity they don't often think of it in their day to day lives and so for that has worked.

Charles doesn't know what to make of it but he opens the door and motions Nathan in. The singer goes straight to the bed where Worm is curled up in center, chewing a hole through the pillow in his sleep. Nathan pets the peach fuzz that has darkened into feathery black hair and watches him sleep for a few minutes. They don't t say anything, but when Charles turns off the light and lies back down, Nathan joins him, flanking Worm, keeping him safe between them.

It has been a couple of months now and Nathan shows up each night like clockwork. Even on concert nights, when by all rights he ought to be painting naked sluts, he comes back in time to put Worm to sleep.

Worm has given Charles something he never thought he would have, exclusivity with Nathan. He doesn't really know what to do with it and neither of them are keen on talking about it. When Worm finally starts sleeping through the night and acquiescing to be put down in his crib, Charles expects the nightly visits to be over. He expects that to be the end of this strange slice of domesticity. Nathan will go back to banging sluts and they will go back to only coming together occasionally when they can't stand being apart any more. He is too surprised for words when he wakes up to Nathan silently crawling into bed next to him. Worm is making his sleepy grinding sounds that have gone from being annoying to so familiar he can hardly sleep without them. Nathan inches closer and reaches out a tentative hand. Charles begins to see that things have changed.

Worm is older now and almost human looking. He's got Nathan's ears and nose and Charles' eyes. So long as you don't look too closely at his mouth, still too many teeth, one could almost mistake him for human.

Charles has acquired a metal play pen in his office for when Nathan is busy during the day. Business associates just assume Worm is the result of a paternity waver gone wrong and Charles has never corrected them.

Worm's pen is filled with an assortment of Nathan approved toys. There is a plush facebones with retractable metal spikes that jut out when you squeeze it. A collection of metal building blocks, Worm kept eating the wooden ones. And one of those spinning things this that normally says stuff like 'the cow says moo' but all the animal sounds have been replaced by the sounds of people dying. Worm is unnaturally attached to that last one and every time he pulls the string and Charles has to listen to blood curdling screams he silently curses the Mordland scientist for having invented it. Sadly the unit has sold nearly a billion copies, so Charles doesn't feel right cursing it out loud.

Worm is playing quietly in the corner while Charles meets with some half assed lawyer trying to sue Dethklok for copyright infringement. The man has no case but Charles has to hear him out anyway. He glances over to Worm who has stopped building the tower of ultimate brutality to watch what the grownups are doing. Charles' attention is drawn back to the other man as he makes some ludicrous threat that will create hours of paperwork for Charles to clean up. Before Charles can throw the man out of his office there is a strange tension in the air and suddenly the man's head explodes. Pieces of brain fly everywhere.

Having finally completed the tower if ultimate brutality, Worm knocks it over and claps at the destruction.

Charles takes a moment to stare in wonderment at the being he has been raising for the last few months before calling in the cleanup crew.

It's becoming easier and easier to arrange accidents for business associates he doesn't like. All he has to do is make sure he's the one watching Worm when their meeting is scheduled. Last time worm exploded the guy's eyeballs (spontaneous blood clot, claimed the baffled doctors) but this time went with the classic vaporized his entire body. It's messy to clean up from but has the advantage leaving no identifiable chunks of the body.

Nathan shows up before the cleanup crew can finish. He goes straight to Worm and picks him up. He hands worm an empty beer bottle and Worm coo's in delight while he eats it.

"What happened here?" he asks, starring at the blood on the ceiling.

Charles hums distractedly from where he is sorting through papers, trying to decide which ones are so blood soaked they will need to be replaced. "Oh, I think our son can explode people's brains with his mind."

Nathan stops making faces at Worm to stare at Charles. "What did you say?"

Charles is still sorting through papers, wondering why no one has invented blood repellant paper. "I think Worm can kill people with his mind." he repeats.

"No, the other thing." Charles puts down the papers and looks confused. He didn't say anything else.

"You called him our son," Nathan clarifies.

Shit, he had. When did that happen?

Nathan walks over to the bloody desk, Worm propped on one hip. "We have a son." he grins.

It's been two years and Worm has shown no signs of talking. If he were a normal human toddler, this would be the point where they called in Dr. Spock. Nathan doesn't seem to be in the least bit worried, but he didn't talk until he was five. Charles has tried to explain how this is not normal but Nathan just shrugs.

Murderface is back to having babysitting privileges now that they know Worm's skin is tough enough to withstand a knife wound. The kid is practically indestructible so they have little to worry about and spend the night out. It's refreshing getting to do something couple-ly for a change. Charles is in a good mod until they arrive home and find Murderface grinning. That is never a good sign.

"Hey guys!" slurs Murderface. "I taught Worm a trick!"

Charles can already feel the dread building in the pit of his stomach.

"What's that?" asks Murderface, pointing at Charles.

Worm giggles and shouts "Dildo!" clear as day.

"Good," says Murderface ruffling Worms black hair. He points this time at Nathan and asks the same question

"DILDO!" shouts Worm again, filled with glee at having pleased his uncle Murderface so.

It just figures. Their kid finally learns how to talk and his first word is dildo.

"Hey?" questions Nathan one afternoon. "Why do you keep spelling Worm's name wrong?" Charles is a smart guy, it's not like he can't spell a four letter word.

Charles looks up from the email he is typing to the interhaus memo Nathan is holding where Worm's name is spelled Wyrm.

"It's not a mistake," says Charles going back to his email.

"Dude, our kid's name is Worm, with an O," Nathan says like Charles is the world's worst father for not knowing his own kid's name.

"Look Nathan, Wyrm is just learning to spell. What do you think we are going to say when he asks us why we named him after gross crawly thing that eats dirt?"

Nathan looks dumbfounded. In retrospect that was sucky thing to name a kid.

"Wyrm with a Y, on the other hand, is an old English word for dragon. This way, when he asks we can explain that actually, he was named for an awesome flying thing that breaths fire and eats villagers."

Nathan grins and leans over the desk to kiss Charles. Charles really makes a great parent.

Charles tries to send him to a local private kindergarten. Wyrm has started to call him daddy and he takes the responsibility seriously. Children need an education but even more so they need to be socialized from an early age. The school he picks is exclusive and they have no problem signing a non-disclosure agreement. Wyrm's not the only child in their care with high profile parents, though they can't be sure who Wyrm's parents really are.

The first few days are okay. Wyrm comes back to the haus full of stories to tell. He proudly tells his dads that he is the most brutal child there. None of the other children have even killed anybody yet. But then, one of the other kids tries to steal the brass knuckles Uncle Murderface had just gotten him, and he makes the poor kid's eyes explode. After that Charles decides to home school him. There are plenty of klokateers around to socialize him and at least they've all signed pain-waivers

Wyrm looks so very human now, it's hard to remember that he is not. When he smiles, the teeth he flashes are a little pointy, but not so out of the ordinary.

The biggest visual clue that he is something other than what he seems is the way he has come to so closely resemble his adopted fathers. His long black hair is the color of Nathan's, but wavy like Charles' hair would be if he didn't slick it back with product. He's got Nathan's nose and Charles' eyes. Charles can find no reasonable explanation for why he should resemble them so.

His looks have more Nathan than Charles in them, which is convenient in that, when people see him they just assume that Nathan was indiscreet.

If you can judge character on actions taken in pre-pubescence, he's got a lot of Charles in him, too. His favorite game is Secret Cabal where he sneaks his stuffed monsters into restricted areas and holds covert meetings according to Robert's rules of order

"Why don't I have a mommy?"

Conversation in the hot tub ground to a halt. Murderface grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "gay".

Coming back to his senses Nathan suggests, "Why don't you go ask Charles?" What was the point of being with a smart guy if you couldn't make him answer all of your kid's difficult questions?

Wyrm wasn't an idiot. He had gone to ask Charles first. The answer had taken nearly an hour and included words like zygotic meiosis and brimstone. He still didn't get why he didn't have a mommy. The plastic idiots on tv said that everyone has a mommy, so where was his?

"I'm asking you," he said standing at the edge of the hot tub trying to look serious. His dad and uncles looked at each other nervously.

"Look, kid," Uncle Pickles began. "You don't have a mommy."

"But the tv said that everyone has a mommy and a daddy even if they don't know who they are."

Skwisgaar twitched at the mention of a daddy. "Havekings a mom and dads ams not brutal." he said.

"Yeah!" piped in Toki. "Alls them other little goofball dildos has mom and dads, they ams nots brutal!"

"Right," said Nathan, picking up on the idea. "You have two dads because having two dads is way more brutal than having a mom and a dad."

Wyrm liked the sound of that; he'd decided early on that he wanted to be the most brutal thing on the planet, just like the rest of his family.

"Yeah!" slurred Murderface. "and if you really want a mom, you can just call the robot mommy!"

A little behind the times, the media finally picks up on the fact that Dethklok has a kid living with them. It only took them six years. The magazines are ripe with speculation. Whoever broke the story included the part were Nathan and Charles are raising him together. It's been a circus, with news outlets pointing accusatory fingers. Pundits have come out of the woodwork claiming Dethklok as part of the gay media conspiracy sent to turn our boys into cocksluts. Christian groups, who never liked Dethklok in the first place, have started boycotts.

Sales continue on unabated. The most surprising thing about the media back lash are the number of female groupies who stormed the TV stations to defend first, Nathan's prowess in bed (some of them go into graphic detail to recount the number of orgasms Nathan had given them in a single night, Nathan makes Charles tape that part.) secondly to defend Nathan and his manger's right to raise children and have a relationship. It's sweet, really. Charles ends up giving the website which organized the protest an exclusive interview, although he still won't answer any questions on where Wyrm came from.

The first time Wyrm called him Dad he had a birth certificate made up listing both him and Nathan as the parents. When people ask he directs them to that document and decline to comment.

Wyrm has learnt a lot of bad habits, living with Dethklok. The kid was practically weaned on liquor and can drink everyone but his dad, Nathan, under the table. Skwisgaar teaches him the worst lessons about women and if his teeth were made of a normal substance they would have rotted from tooth decay with all the candy Toki gives him.

Charles knows that the boys share their pot with Wyrm, although the kid had to be somewhere near nine years old, but it's never bothered him in the past. As far as Charles can tell the pot doesn't really affect him. His eyes don't even get red. Once he claimed to have the munchies, but he was more likely just hungry. Wyrm has very little similarity to normal human biology despite the superficial resemblance to a human. Charles figured he would never be affected by drugs. This was a mistake. Five klokateers have had their heads exploded in the last half an hour and Pickles and Wyrm are giggling like idiots in front of Pickles' hand held camera.

Charles doesn't know what they have taken, but he has the living room under lock down until they come down.

The next day, after the mess has been cleaned up, Charles calls Wyrm into his office.

"Now son," he begins, Wyrm knows it serious when Charles dad calls him son like that. "I don't want to tell you what to do and I know you are different from other people, you're practically indestructible. But, if your uncle Pickles ever offers you a substance called yopo, I want you to say no. Do you understand?"

Wyrm is aware that he is not like other people. He sees the world differently. There is a power under the surface of things and he can draw on that power and bend it to his will. Charles dad has made him promise not to explode other people any more, unless they threaten him first. He misses the thrill of tightly coiling all that power at his finger tips and releasing it inside of someone, but he's since found other things to do. He can visit people in their dreams. Not his dads or his uncles, they're not like other people either, but the klokateers. He can tell them things and freak them out. He can plant ideas in their head. He uses this power for his own amusement until he gets bored and his dad starts to get suspicious that so many of his personal gears have gone insane.

"I want to show you something, son."

Wyrm is confused. Charles has lead him down a long corridor deep underground. He is vaguely aware that his father is paranoid and there are secret passages all over his home, but he has never been invited into one before. His other dad has shown him the secret passage that leads to the kitchens but this is the first time that Charles dad has openly acknowledged the hidden rooms.

The room Charles is taking him to is behind three different false walls with eleven different levels of security. Wyrm was expecting there to be something really cool at the end of all of these security measures. He is disappointed to find that room contains a sea of filing cabinets and a couple of display cases full of junk. He peers into a display case hoping to see what is so interesting but it just looks like pieces of burnt wood to him.

"What's that?" he asks his dad.

"Those are the metacarpals of a Scandinavian lake troll." Charles says. "This room contains evidence of every supernatural thing that has ever happened to your dad and uncles."

Wyrm looks around and notices that filing cabinets do seem to go on for quite a few rows.

As Charles walks through the rows of cabinets he comments, "There was even a file on you, back when you first came into our lives, but I've since redacted most of the information."

Charles stops in front of a giant stone slab. "This is the center piece of my collection, The Ancient Sumerian Artifact."

Wyrm stares in fascination at the tablet, running his fingers over the protective glass case. The carved figures look remarkably like his dad and uncles.

"What does it mean?" He asks his dad, the man who usually has all the answers.

"I don't know," admits Charles. "Before you came into our lives I used to come down here and just stare at it, but I never got any closer to figuring it out."

They both turn to stare at the carving some more and Wyrm wonders why has dad has shown this to him.

"Whatever it is, Wyrm, you're part of it, too. I thought you had a right to know."

Wyrm had learnt early on that if something had hurt him and he wanted something done about it, he went to Charles dad. Charles dad would burn the rest of the earth to the ground if he thought it had somehow wronged his son. If, on the hand, he just wanted someone to listen, he went to Nathan dad. Nathan dad never tried to solve his problems with murder. Nathan dad would just hand him a beer and let him say what he needed to say.

Teenage Wyrm is a pain in the ass, but what did you expect. He drinks like a fish and his uncles are the very definition of bad influences. His rebellious phase includes stealing a helicopter and wiping out a military instillation. To be fair to Wyrm, they totally over reacted when they drew their guns on him. He would have gotten bored taunting them eventually and if they hadn't shot first he would have let them all live.

It was supposed to be this grand whirlwind tour. Twenty five years of making the world fucking metal. It was a celebration of all that they had accomplished. They were visiting every corner of the globe, playing music, spreading the message of brutality.

Since the tour would take four months to complete, Wyrm and Charles had come too. Living on the road was awesome, Charles dad was too busy to micro manage his every move and uncle Skwisgaar had taught him how to spot a tranny hooker.

Watching his dad and his uncles play music all the time was awesome. He loved the raw power he could feel from the crowd. Dethklok shows were always so full of energy he was higher than his uncle Pickles off the adrenaline alone.

His dads had taken time out of their schedules to visit a tomb in Egypt, the catacombs in France, the killing fields in Cambodia. He was starting to feel a little too old to be hanging out with his parents but Dethklok was cool enough to cover the stink of parental supervision.

They were in the last couple weeks of the tour, some bullshit town in Indonesia. Dad said it would revitalize the economy or something.

Dethklok has just begun to play when Wyrm realizes that something doesn't feel right. He can't put his finger on it but he runs to the control room where he knows Charles dad will be.

He gets there too late. The sky had turned black. This isn't just your normal Dethklok supernatural antics. This is something big. Wyrm gazes terrified across the control room at his dad shouting frantic orders. Holes are ripping open around the stage, the fans are being swallowed up by the earth.

"Wyrm!" Charles shouts across the crowed control room when he sees his son. "Get to the panic room! I'll meet you there soon!"

Wyrm stood frozen to the spot as something invisible crawled across his skin. It is almost like a memory from a time before he could really remember.

His dad shouts at him again and two elite hoods drag him by the arms to the panic room. Before they reach it, Wyrm can hear an ancient chittering, like thousands of insects clamoring for attention. To his horror he can almost understand what they are saying. It's not words exactly, but a feeling in his very core. 'The time has passed,' they say 'and we must be paid in blood.'

The hoods that are guarding him fall to their knees, blood pouring from ever orifice. Wyrm doesn't even look at them, he runs toward the panic room, praying that his dads and uncles are alright.

Inside each shadow he passes he hears a voice call out to him for retribution. There is a price owed and someone must pay it.

By the time he reaches the panic room he knows he is too late. He sees his dad and his uncles ripped to shreds, blood coating the floor. Charles dad is still fighting valiantly against an unseen assailant but the force he fights is older than time it's self.

It is talking to his dad, who is fighting for every last breath. "We gave you power, power beyond your wildest dreams and you failed to bring about The Metalocalypse." the words come from the walls, the shadows themselves. They come from no clear source and speak a language so old it has no name. The words resonate in Wyrm's very soul. "Now you must pay the price."

And after those words Charles falls to his knees, skull crushed by an unseen force.

Wyrm stands speechless, surrounded by the remains of everyone he knows and loves. The darkness is surrounding him and he knows he only has one shot before it engulfs him and sends him back to where he came from. He closes his eyes and steadies his breath, just like Charles dad taught him, and he has to push back the tears. He reaches for that invisible force that is always with him and draws power from the darkness around him. Before the darkness knows what he has done, he rips a hole through space and time, to a time where his parents are still alive. He lets himself be drawn into the void and seals it up before anything can follow him.

He closes his eyes and breaths deeply, this time picturing his other dad before a big show.

When he opens his eyes he has a better idea of where he is. He has gone far into the past, ten years before Dethklok has even formed. His long hair, normal the same black as his dad has turned shocking white.

The world begins to move around him and a plan begins to form. Ten years is plenty of time to plan, like his dad taught him. To formulate measures for ever contingency. His parents were killed for failing to start the Metalocalypse. He has the time now, and thanks to his dads, the skills. He will insure that the Metalocalypse comes to pass.

The rest of the world may burn for it, but he can't see his family killed a second time.

He will need a new name for this new life and this new mission of his. He names himself after the place where his parents died so that he never forgets what he is fighting for. Selatica for Selat, Indonesia.

The end

AN: This was inspired by this discussion post were people commented on how Selatica looked like Nathan and Charles' love child. That made me wonder how it would work. There would pretty much have to be time travel involved. And I didn't think that Nathan and Charles would be such bad parents that Selatica would bend the laws of time and space just to kill them. That in turn begged the question of what he was doing with the council. Selat, Indonesia is a real place. I was trying to figure out what Selatica's name might mean and that was the best I could come up with. Thank you for sticking with this and reading through the crazy ideas that come out my head. Beta'ed by sjofn0nott(lj) Written for Brutal Business Nathan/Charles month

Also there is art of baby Worm here: .com/crow821/pic/0005srzq (Pic by crow821)


	2. Epilogue

_**Epilogue**_

All children start off thinking of their parents as immortal. It's practically a survival instinct. Selatica has concrete evidence that they are not, what with his last dramatic memories as Wyrm, and yet, on some level he still thinks of them that way. It's like, other than some nameless, formless evil he has sworn to placate, they are immune to death. He remembers the way his dad and uncles could stand in the middle of a disaster without a scratch on them. The way his other dad could take on an army with only a letter opener and be just fine.

When he approved the attack on Mordhaus it never seriously occurred to him that his dads could be in any real danger. The attack was just supposed to be a distraction, something to keep the rest of the tribunal busy while he used Crozier to further the Metalocalypse. No one (important) was supposed to get hurt.

He never should have let that masked assassin live. If he could find him now, he would rip his guts out through his nose.

The rest of the tribunal was celebrating; with Charles gone they all thought Dethklok would soon follow. He wanted to make them bleed. He wanted them to feel his pain. He'd somehow, however accidentally, killed his father.

He dismissed the council early, before another idiot could congratulate him on a job well done. He went back to his private chamber, secret passageways within secret passageways, just like his dad had taught him. It was a stupid risk but his room was much like his old room at Mordhaus. Things were different in this timeline. Without him, Dethklok never unveiled its line of extremely brutal kid's toys. They still made a stuffed Facebones with retractable metal spikes and he had one lying on top of the dresser.

He had a handful of framed surveillance photos, candid shots of his dads and uncles blissfully unaware they were being watched. It was stupid to miss people who don't even know you exist.

He doesn't know what happened but there is no baby Worm in this timeline. They played the concert at Hell's Gate like before but there was no baby at the end.

He can't even tell for sure if his parents are together this time around. They were never really that affectionate in public. Even after they were outed by the media, they preferred to keep their private life private. When the doors to the outside world closed and it was just the three of them, or sometimes the seven of them, they would drop the barriers and Wyrm could see clear as day that his parents loved each other. Charles dad would mess with Nathan dad's hair. Nathan dad would pull Charles dad close and whisper things that would make Charles blush.

He'd almost had Rebecca Nightrod killed for coming between his parents. He can remember Charles dad telling him how Nathan had the worst taste in women but he'd never had to see it for himself. He was all set to call in a hit on her when she'd gone ahead and offed herself.

It made his heart ache. If his parents hadn't already been together it was too late now. Charles dad was dead.

It has been almost nine months since his dad had died. The tribunal still met regularly but they were in a holding pattern. Officially they were waiting for Dethklok to destroy themselves, but unofficially Selatica was giving them time to morn. It looked like Dethklok would bankrupt themselves soon, anyway. It wasn't ideal, but at least they were still alive.

Vater Orlaag had asked him out for a few beers after the meeting but he had put him off. Charles dad always said, had always said, that any good secret cabal needs at least one religious figure to be truly shadowy. Then he'd given him a plush Godzilla and informed him it was now the space pope. But he wasn't in the mood for beer today.

He could just hear his Uncle Pickles after his favorite yard wolf had died. "Admitting sadness makes you gay, kiddo."

So he put on his stony emotionless face and said vaguely ominous things at meetings then went home to mope in private. He headed straight to his bed, wanting just to lie down and wonder where he had gone wrong in life. Should he have just accepted his parent's death and let the darkness enfold him?

Before he had gotten more than a few steps into his room he heard his door slam shut and noise behind him.

"I don't know what game you are playing at, but it is sloppy really, to use the same security measures as your target."

It was Charles, alive and well, standing behind the door of his private room. He had a new scar on his face that Wyrm didn't recognize and he wasn't wearing a suit, but it was Charles.

Wyrm couldn't help it. The first word out of his mouth was "Dad."

Charles' eyes narrowed and Selatica tried to replace his cold calculated mask of indifference. Maybe Charles would just assume he had miss heard.

"Who are you?" Charles asked.

Selatica scrambled to think of something vaguely ominous to say.

"I'm none of your concern." he tried to say it in his resonating mystery voice. It came out sounding weak. Feeble, like a line from the wrong play. He never could master the art of lying to his dad.

Charles stared at him. "Now I know you are not that bad of a liar."

It was so much like growing up. Charles having him sit in on a meeting and explaining afterwards that half the battle was lying convincingly.

Wyrm had no choice but to tell the truth, even if his dad wouldn't believe him.

"I'm your son, from a different time line." Selatica fully expected to be shot. Charles dad had never been one to put up with nonsense. He'd once had one of the klokateers shot for telling him the Easter bunny was real.

As Wyrm geared up for what were sure to be his last moments on earth, Charles relaxed his defensive stance.

"What, you believe me?" Wyrm asked when no shot came.

"Well, it would explain a lot. If I raised you, even in a different time line, it would explain why the security measures on this place are exactly the way I would have designed them. Why the tribunal is exactly the way I would have organized things. Why you've never made a serious attempt on my life."

"But I got you killed!" Wyrm said, like a guilty child coming clean after being caught dipping into Uncle Pickles' stash when he'd promised not to.

"No you didn't," Charles sounded exactly like the dad he remembered in that moment. "That masked assassin did. And Crozier was responsible for him. I'm surprised I never warned you about men like Crozier."

"You did, I just needed his influence with the military enough to take the risk. I've taken care of the problem; he won't be acting on his own anymore."

Then Wyrm did something he'd been longing to do since that concert in Indonesia. He reached out and hugged his dad. It must have looked ridiculous. He was bigger and taller than his dad and Charles stood there stiffly, unsure of what to do. Selatica had to swallow back all the words he wanted to say, they would be meaningless to this version of Charles. He let Charles go quickly and tried to straighten out his suit like he hadn't just done that.

"Anyway, I'm glad you're not dead, I bet dad will be happy to see you alive, too."

Charles, who had been examining the contents of the room while Selatica composed himself turned to stare at him.

"Dad? I thought I was your dad?" Charles looked at him like he couldn't keep his lies straight, one of the first skills Charles dad had taught him.

"I have two dads." Wyrm explained, unsure of how much he should say.

Charles sat down hard on the bed. "Holy Shit." he breathed. "Are you telling me that in your time line Nathan and I get together?" he said that like it was the most shocking part of the whole time traveling son revelation.

Wyrm nodded and smiled when he realized Charles had come up with the name Nathan all on his own. He knew his dads still loved each other, no matter what the time line threw at them.


End file.
